


hold my hand (it's a long way down)

by Murf1307



Category: Wolverine and the X-Men (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Developing Friendships, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Holding Hands, Morality, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Quentin Quire, Other, References to AXIS, References to Drugs, References to Hellfire Academy, References to Schism, References to Tomorrow Never Learns, Religion, Revenge, Skirts, Someone Please Help These Teenagers, Teenagers, references to murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 10:05:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4560492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A selection of moments in Evan Sabahnur's life, centered around two of the most important people in it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold my hand (it's a long way down)

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be a prompt response but I don't remember who sent it.

If there’s anything that Evan’s learned about Quentin Quire in the two years that they’ve known each other, it’s that Quentin likes telling the world to ‘%$#@ off.’  Every movement, every fashion choice, every free use of telepathy to glean information and secrets off of people, effortlessly, because, according to Quentin, ‘shielding’s for people who can’t process ten million thoughts a second’ — all of it’s purely calculated to tell the world that Quentin will not be playing by its rules.  
  
So really, it shouldn’t be a surprise when Quentin shows up in class one day wearing a skirt.  Evan does his best not to stare, because the skirt's not nearly as short as some of the shorts Quentin has worn, and it's summer, and he has no business staring at Quentin anyway.  It's rude, and inappropriate, and he really needs to look away.  
  
Idie nudges his elbow as Quentin crosses the room, skirt flouncing, to lean heavily on Professor Pryde's desk, legs crossed at the ankles.  Evan finally manages to tear his eyes away and he looks at Idie.  "Wh-what?”  
  
“Are you staring at Quentin?” Idie asks, one eyebrow creeping upward in surprise.  
  
“No!” he yelps.  “That would be rude.”  
  
Idie laughs a little.  “Quentin doesn’t mind, I don’t think.  They're doing it to get a rise out of people, they always are.”  
  
Evan still blushes and buries his face in his hands.  “It’s still rude to stare.  And besides, Quentin wouldn’t want _me_  staring, anyway.  You’re probably allowed, you’re their girlfriend.”  
  
She laughs even more, giggling now.  “Careful, they’re coming over here.”  
  
Quentin sits on the corner of Idie’s desk, crossing their legs.  Their skirt rides up a little, showing a little more thigh.  
  
“That, um, the skirt, it’s, um,” Evan manages, hiding his face again.  “Short.”  
  
That makes Quentin burst out laughing.  “The skirt is short on _purpose_ , Ev.”    
  
“And is the purpose flustering Evan until he can’t function?” Idie asks, also teasing.  They are both terrible, and Evan doesn’t know why they’re his best friends.  
  
Quentin snorts.  “Flustering Evan Sabahnur is a given, and a nice side effect, but the purpose is saying ‘fuck you’ to gender roles.  I like skirts, they look like you put effort in when really you just didn’t feel like putting on pants.”  
  
Evan just puts his head down on his desk.  
  
This is going to be a very, very long day.

 

* * *

 

It is in fact a very, very long day.  Now that Quentin knows that their skirt is distracting to Evan, they make a point of drawing his attention all day, smirking and stretching and _bending over_.  
  
It’s terrible, and part of Evan never wants it to stop, even as he does his best to ignore it.  
  
“You are _really_ bad at ignoring me, you know,” Quentin says after the three of them get out of their last last class of the day.  For once Quentin doesn’t have detention, which means they’re following Evan and Idie out into the gardens — the weather is wonderful this time of year, even without Headmistress Munroe’s intervention.    
  
Evan bites his lip.  “You draw a lot of attention, Quentin.  That’s kind of your _thing._ ”  
  
Idie’s laughing at them behind her hand as she settles on the grass, flopping over onto her back.  “Broo should be coming out a bit later for study group.  Usually we have it now, but he’s helping Dr. McCoy in the lab today, something about the time machine,” she says, for Quentin’s benefit.  
  
“God, the three of you are _so boring_ ,” Quentin insists, rolling their eyes and cuddling up to Idie on the grass.  Both of them are wearing skirts, and Evan’s never really thought about it before, but Idie’s skirt is kind of short, too.  He sighs, closing his eyes and trying not to think about it.  Quentin would undoubtedly hear, and definitely laugh at him.  
  
He sits down anyway, feeling particularly skinny and knobby-kneed in comparison.  Usually he's grateful for how unassuming he looks, because the less he looks like Apocalypse, the better, but right now he feels self-conscious.  
  
Quentin's skinny, too, but they own it, they draw attention to themself with baggy or too-tight or artfully torn shirts with things like 'Magneto Was Right' or 'X Anarchist' on them.  Skinniness looks right on them, and they have a confidence that Evan doesn't think he'll ever have.  
  
And Idie?  Idie's beautiful.  Usually he doesn't think about it, because it's just a part of life, like homework or Kubark wanting something to punch, but he's very aware of it now.  The way her tight curls fall over her forehead and almost seem to float sometimes, the wry twist of her smile, the slender curve of her silhouette -- he doesn't mean to be looking, but now that he's thinking about her like that (about _both of them_ like that, really) it's really hard not to.  
  
"Penny for your thoughts, Kid Apocalypse?" Quentin asks, grinning.  
  
Evan sighs.  "Please don't call me that."  
  
"You could try and own it, y'know," they say, shrugging.  "Like, so what, you're Apocalypse's test tube baby, who cares?  Nobody assumes the Cuckoos are gonna become Emma Frost, right?  Same principle."  
  
"Emma Frost hasn't done the kinds of things Apocalypse has, Quentin."  
  
"Phoenix Force Five," Quentin shot back.  "And the first time I came back to life."  
  
Evan frowns.  "Wait, you've _died?"_  
  
Idie shifts as well, turning over to glare at Quentin.  "You never told me that," she says, looking dismayed.  
  
Quentin bites their lip and shrugs.  "I'm a future Phoenix, it kind of comes with the job description.  Plus, I was a shithead thirteen year old, it hardly matters."  
  
"But what _happened?_ "  
  
"Are you asking what the afterlife is like, or how did I die?"  
  
Idie rolls her eyes.  "How you _died_ , Quentin."  
  
Evan nods.  The afterlife has never been of much interest to him, after all.  He frowns questioningly at Quentin to back Idie up.  
  
Quentin tugs self-consciously at the hem of their skirt.  "The short version is that I started a mutant-supremacist gang, did a lot of Kick, and very nearly took over the Xavier Institute when I was thirteen.  The Cuckoos stopped me, but the strain and the Kick killed me."  
  
Idie pulls them closer.  "That's awful."  
  
They laugh ruefully.  "What, no talk of how I'm a monster?"  
  
"You're not," Evan broke in.  
  
"I've killed people, Ev.  For no other reason than them being regular humans.  And one of the Cuckoos _died_  stopping me."  They shrug.  "Honestly, if you wanna argue monsters, I'm clearly the worst."  
  
Idie's quiet, but she keeps hold of Quentin.  Evan bites his lower lip and scoots forward, reaching over and wrapping his hand around Quentin’s ankle.  “I don’t think we wanna argue monsters, Quentin,” he murmurs to them.  
  
“It doesn’t change things,” Idie agrees.    
  
Quentin twists around and stares at her.  “Are you sure you’re you, and not like, a Skrull or something?  Because I’m pretty sure you should hate me for what I’ve done.”  
  
She sighs.  “I don’t.  Should I?”  
  
“Well, yeah.  You should.  Now that you know, anyway.”  
  
Evan bites his lip.  “Are you sorry for what you did?” he asks, meeting Quentin’s eyes firmly.  
  
They bite their lip as well.  “It’s not something I’d ever do again, I don’t think.  Not for those reasons, anyway.  But it’s not like that excuses me, Evan.  There are people who might still be alive today if not for me.  Being sorry doesn’t bring them back.”  
  
“It doesn’t, but it kind of — you knowing that you did something wrong mitigates it a little, somehow.”  Evan frowns, not sure how to explain it.  “You know you did something terrible, and if you could fix it you would.  Right?”  
  
Quentin bites the inside of their cheek.  “Right.  But does it matter?  I _can’t_  fix it.”  
  
Idie holds them tighter.  “You know I’m a murderer, too.”  
  
Evan has a feeling he's intruding on a moment, but at this point it would probably be rude to try and leave so they can have some privacy.  
  
Quentin sighs.  "That's different, you did that to save people.  I was just high on my own superiority or something.”  
  
Idie doesn’t say anything to that, and Evan wishes he could reach out and pull both of them close, because even if they don’t believe they’re anything but monsters, he thinks he knows them well enough to know that someone should.  
  
He squeezes Quentin’s ankle.  “I’m gonna — I’m gonna go get some iced tea from the kitchen, I’ll be back in a minute,” he says, quickly, hoping Quentin can tell he means it and isn’t just trying to escape.  
  
“Okay,” Quentin says, softly.  “Don’t forget the sugar.”

 

* * *

 

Evan’s not sure how all of this has come to this, really.  All he wants is to keep his friends safe, keep the school safe — he wants to be a hero, too, wants to prove the whole world wrong about the accident of his genetics, but his friends and the school come even before that — but his friends are terrible at keeping _themselves_ safe.  
  
Quentin’s followed Idie into danger again, and Evan is chasing them both down.  Headmaster Logan doesn’t know because he’s off doing something with the X-Force, and Evan’s not quite comfortable asking most of the other teachers for advice.  
  
So he just chases after Quentin, who’s chasing after Idie.  
  
The object, this time, is once again Kade Kilgore, teenaged Black King of the Hellfire Club.  Because Idie knows, now, that it was Kilgore who set in motion everything about the Schism, and she has a hatred in her chest that she’s going to burn and freeze into him if they let her.  
  
Evan’s afraid it’s all a trap, that all of this is going to end in capture and torture, like it did that time Idie defected to the Hellfire Academy to try and avenge Broo.  
  
Quentin had followed her then, too.  Evan hadn’t because he hadn’t realized soon enough what was going on.  
  
“Idie, this is a _terrible_  plan,” Quentin is saying, wearing a skirt again.  Evan’s not paying it much attention this time, because there are far more important things.  They grab hold of Idie’s wrist.  
  
“He’s the reason everything went wrong,” Idie says, voice a deadly chill.  “He’s the reason I had to do the things I did.  He’s hurt me too many times and he doesn’t even _know_.”  
  
Evan catches up to the two of them.  “Please don’t get yourselves killed,” he says plaintively.  
  
Quentin gives him a wild look, an almost desperate look.  “Tell that to her,” they say.  
  
“I won’t let Kilgore keep getting away with everything he’s done,” Idie says, looking at Evan with fire in her eyes.    
  
He doesn’t understand the depth of this, that much he knows, because this isn’t something he’s ever gone through.  There isn’t a single person that represents the majority of things that have gone wrong in Evan’s life, there’s no convenient starting point.  
  
There’s just him and his own genetic makeup.  Just him and Apocalypse.  
  
“What if you get killed doing this, Idie?” Evan asks.  “Or what if, what if you get arrested and Headmaster Logan can’t fix it?”  
  
“It would be worth it to hear him scream.  I want to see him pay,” she says.  “Hey destroyed all of it.”  
  
Quentin shakes their head.  “Not all of it.  He used me as a pawn, sure, but dammit, Idie, I’m the one who crashed that U.N. conference.  I’m the reason they had a chance to market those fucking Sentinels!”  
  
“We can’t lose you, Idie,” Evan says, biting his lip.  “No matter who’s to blame for all of this.  You’re too important to throw yourself away for revenge.”  
  
Idie looks at him almost like she’s seeing him for the first time.  Like something’s different now.  
  
“I want to hurt him,” she says.  “I want to.”  
  
Quentin takes her hand.  “Then we will.  But not just yet.  We need to take it slower than that.  Make it last.  He’s a rich little boy with some high tech toys — let’s hit his pocketbook first.”   
  
Evan can practically see the plan forming in Quentin’s head, and even if it’s not strictly ethical, he’s not opposed to it if it’s going to keep Idie from getting hurt more.  He nods.  “And if you need me for anything,” he says, softly adding his support.  
  
“…You would…?”  Idie cocks her head and looks between Quentin and Evan in a sort of quiet bewilderment.    
  
“Of course we would,” Quentin says, squeezing her hand.  “I mean, you’re my girlfriend, and Evan’s pretty much the most Lawful Good person I know — there’s no reason he wouldn’t.”  
  
Evan bites his lip and nods, stepping a little closer.  “They're right.”  
  
“I…”  Idie reaches out for Evan and pulls him and Quentin into a hug.  “Thank you.”  
  
Evan blushes a little and hugs back, one arm wrapped around her waist and his other hand flat against Quentin’s back.  They’re holding onto her for dear life, one arm laid across her waist right above Evan’s and the other curled around her shoulders.  
  
“Let’s go home, yeah?” Quentin asks, tipping their forehead against Idie’s.  
  
“Okay,” she whispers.  
  
Evan bites his lip and holds onto both of them a little tighter, thinking for a long moment that he would do anything to keep the two of them safe.  Absolutely anything.  
  
Maybe that should scare him, but it doesn’t.

 

* * *

 

It’s Christmastime in Westchester, and there’s snow, snow that Headmistress Munroe didn’t make.  Evan couldn’t be more excited if he _tried_ , and he’s practically _bouncing_  with joy.  
  
He goes with Idie to her Advent Masses at one of the churches down in Salem Center, and even though he wasn’t raised particularly religious, he still grew up in Kansas — church was a fairly regular occurrence for him.  
  
“I’m thinking of inviting Quentin to Midnight Mass on Christmas,” Idie tells him, walking home from church one night.  “I just don’t know if they’d want to go.”  
  
Evan cocks his head to the side.  “I think it’s worth asking.  They know it’s important to you.”  
  
“Yes, but…it’s not as though they’ve ever really shown interest in it before…” Idie bites her lip.  “I want to share this with them.  I know they don’t really believe in God, but…I still want to share this part of me with them.”  
  
“Then you should ask.  Maybe they don’t know how to bring it up?”  Evan reaches out and squeezes her hand.  “And even if they don’t want to go, I’ll go with you, if you don’t mind.”  
  
Idie smiles at him and squeezes back.  “Thank you.”  
  
When they get back to the school, Evan realizes belatedly that they’re still holding hands, and he blushes.  It’s nice, and it doesn’t feel like either of them is doing anything wrong, so he tries not to be embarrassed about it.  
  
Quentin seems to appear out of nowhere, sliding around a corner as the two of them come inside.  They see Evan and Idie holding hands and raise an eyebrow.  “How was church?” they ask.  
  
“It was nice,” Evan says, letting go of Idie’s hand.  
  
“Quentin, can I — I want to talk to you about something,” Idie says, doing her best to sound certain.  
  
Quentin’s expression drops and they turn on their heel and disappear down the hall.  Idie frowns, visibly hurt, and Evan reaches out to hold her hand again, not sure what else to do.  
  
Idie shifts a little closer, tugs him closer than that, and he hugs her.  He’s starting to get tall, and he rests his chin on the top of her head, trying to be comforting.  Carefully, he rubs her back, and suddenly wonders if this is his fault for holding Idie’s hand in the first place.  
  
“Do you want me to try and talk to them?” he asks, carefully.  
  
“Do you think they’d listen?” Idie asked, her voice sad.  
  
Evan clenches his jaw a little in determination.  “I think I should at least try.”

 

* * *

 

He finds them outside, on one of Krakoa’s hills.  He approaches slowly, because he doesn’t want them to think he’s forcing this conversation.  
  
Because that’s all this is.  A conversation.  
  
“If she’s breaking up with me she can tell me herself,” Quentin says, not looking at him.  
  
“She’s not.  Quentin, it’s not like that.”  Evan sits down next to them.  “We’re just friends.  You can look in my head to prove it, if you want.”  
  
Quentin whips their head around and stares at him.  “You’d let _me_  in your head?  On _purpose?_ ”  
  
Evan shrugs.  “Why wouldn’t I?”  
  
“I just…didn’t think you trusted me that much.”  Quentin hugs their knees to their chest a little tighter.  “I don’t exactly make people _want_  to let me in their heads.”  
  
“You won’t hurt me,” Evan says, sure of it.    
  
Quentin keeps staring at him like what he said didn’t make any sense.  “You really think that?”  
  
“Do you think I shouldn’t?”  
  
“I —“  Quentin bites their lip.  “I won’t hurt you, no.”  
  
Evan smiles a little.  He’d known that already, but it’s good to hear them say it out loud.  “Then I don’t see why I shouldn’t let you in my head.”  
  
Quentin nods, like they still don’t understand why Evan is so willing.  “Okay.”  
  
Then, they shift over a little and cover Evan’s hand with their own.  Evan doesn’t feel much, but he figures Quentin must be reading him, so he starts thinking about the conversation he’d had with Idie, why he’d been holding her hand in the first place.  
  
Quentin makes a soft noise.  “She — she _wants_  me to come to church with her?”  
  
Evan nods.  “Yes,” he says, turning his hand over under Quentin’s and lacing their fingers together.  “She just isn’t sure how to ask you, because she kind of thinks you won’t want to.”  
  
“I don’t get it,” Quentin whispers.  “I’m — I don’t even really believe in God.  Why would she want me to go to church with her?”  
  
“You’re important to her.  You’re dating, after all.  And this is important to her, and she wants to share it with you.”  He shrugs a little.  “And it’s not so bad, really, the church services.  Might be boring if you don’t believe in it, but I don’t know.”  
  
Quentin laughs a little bit.  “Y’know, you’re a lot funnier than you make yourself out to be,” they say.  
  
Evan smiles a little and looks down, warmed by the compliment.

 

* * *

 

Midnight Mass goes off without a hitch, and Quentin and Idie are holding hands on the way out.  Evan takes up the rear, entirely glad to just watch them be happy.  
  
About halfway back to the school, though, Quentin twists around, reaching for his hand to tug him forward.  It comes out of nowhere, and Evan’s surprised, but he laces his fingers with theirs and smiles.  
  
_Thank you,_  they say to him telepathically.    
  
Evan smiles a little wider, and thinks back, _No problem._

 

* * *

 

As it turns out, there are a _lot_  of problems.  
  
Quentin leaves.  Evan is pretty sure it’s his fault, or the fault of a him that doesn’t exist yet, but they leave, and Idie isn’t herself anymore, and everyone is looking at him with a mixture of fear and pity.  
  
Faithful John came to kill him, and Idie and Quentin went into the future, and now he can’t ask them what they saw there, because Quentin is _gone_  and Idie is different and he’s scared to ask why.  So he just retreats into himself.  
  
The first thing he does is cut his hair.  It’s not exactly like Quentin’s haircut but it’s close, and he doesn’t blow dry it anymore, so it’s curly and fluffy and looks a little coarser than it does when it’s straight.  He needs to do something, change something, because it feels like the future is once again out of his control.  
  
He prays a little bit, that the Butterfly Effect is real, and that this will be enough, that them all falling apart now will keep them from becoming whatever it was Idie and Quentin saw.  
  
He thinks he knows that Apocalypse had something to do with it, and he lets himself cry about it, just once.  
  
A few weeks after his haircut, it’s Quentin’s birthday, but Quentin isn’t there.  He gets an invitation, starched and in gold ink, inviting him to a nightclub, and he doesn’t go.  
  
Instead, on Quentin’s birthday, he goes and finds Idie.  
  
She’s crying in a back corner of the library, and she stares up at him like she doesn’t know what to say.  
  
“Did they send you an invitation too?” he asks, and his voice shakes a little.  
  
She nods, and he sits down next to her.    
  
“They didn’t have to leave,” she says softy, tipping over to lean against his shoulder.  “They didn’t — and they just…like there wasn’t anything to stay for.”  
  
Evan nods and wraps an arm around her.  That’s the part that hurts the most, and he doesn’t even know exactly what it is they’re running from.  
  
“I — I kill them, Evan,” she sobs.  “Killed them.  In the future.  They were the Phoenix and they had to be stopped and they almost killed themselves to stop it from happening but the Phoenix version of them wouldn’t let them, so I — I did it.  Because they weren’t expecting me to.”  
  
“You killed the future one?” Evan asks, shifting and wrapping both arms around her.  “I’m sorry,” he whispers.  “I’m so sorry.”  
  
She shakes her head.  “It’s not — it’s not your fault.  It wasn’t ever your fault.”  
  
“Was I…was I...him?” Evan asks, haltingly.  
  
She nods.  “And I was your Horseman.”    
  
They all know about the Horsemen of Apocalypse — the X-Men’s previous conflicts with Apocalypse are part of the history curriculum here.  
  
He wants to cry.  “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry,” he repeats, because he is.  
  
“It’s not your fault, Evan, not even the Phoenix blamed you,” she says, clinging to him a little.  “Even — even they put more blame on Professor Logan than they put on you and I.”  
  
It’s something of a comfort.  Evan pulls her closer.  “What else?” he asks, because he needs to know.  
  
“They — that Quentin, the future one, they couldn’t kill us.  Killing you would have killed me too, and they couldn’t.  They locked us in Cerebra and trapped you in your own head.  They said, the said they ‘sent you home to Kansas.’”  
  
Evan starts crying at that, because he and Idie both know what that means.  It means that even in the end when everything falls apart, Quentin still cares more about them than they do about the world.  Because Faithful John’s future is farther flung than that one, and that means that by saving their lives, Quentin dooms the world and doesn’t even regret it.  
  
Idie’s crying still, too, and they cry together, in that little corner of the library, on Quentin’s birthday, and wish that things were different.

 

* * *

 

Genosha is terrible.  Genosha is everything Evan has ever been afraid of, crushed together into a week of pain, horror, and guilt.  
  
The only bright spot is knowing that Quentin fought their hardest to try and save the world, and that they tried that hard in part because he asked them to.  In the aftermath, holed up in one of Wade’s hidey-holes, Evan at least still has that to comfort him.

 

* * *

 

Idie’s the one who pulls it all back together.  From what little Evan can tell, from what he hears from Wade that Wade hears from all sorts of people, the multiverse is collapsing in on itself, and soon their universe is going to crash into another one, and that could very well be the end of everything.  
  
For the first time, Evan wants to go home, and when he thinks home he doesn’t mean Kansas.  
  
But he’s too afraid of what going home might mean, given the things he’s done.  Even inverted, it wasn’t as though he even had the Phoenix to fall back on, to share the blame.  It was still him.  
  
Idie calls him, though, and he’s not sure how she got his new number, but she calls him.  
  
“Quentin’s going to be taking me out for Valentine’s Day.  There’s a place in the city that they like, it’s a hamburger place, I think,” she tells him, before he can even ask how she’s doing.  “Please be there.”  
  
“I — okay,” he says.  “Idie, what’s wrong?”  
  
She sighs.  “Quentin hasn’t been all right since what happened to the two of you last fall.  They’re trying, harder than ever, but they…I think they need you.  They need to know you’re okay.”  
  
Evan bites his lip and nods.  “Okay.  Just.  Tell me where I need to be.”  
  
She does.  “And, Evan?” she asks, afterward, soft and almost hesitant.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I need to know you’re okay, too.”

 

* * *

 

Evan is chewing on his lip inside the burger place, hands jammed in the pockets of his coat, when Quentin and Idie walk in.  Quentin doesn’t notice him at first; they’re too busy talking animatedly to Idie about something, and that gives him a few moments to look at both of them, to look them both over really.  
  
Quentin looks thinner, and the animation of their movements is more frenetic, more nervous, like they’re afraid to stop.  Idie looks even more weathered and tired than she had before Genosha.  
  
It’s good to know Quentin went back to the school — Evan doesn’t know what Idie would have done, left alone with just Broo and the others, because they don’t necessarily understand what’s going on the way he or Quentin can.  
  
He misses both of them even more fiercely than usual, and they’re standing right in front of him.  
  
As he glances down, he hears Idie quietly say his name, and when he looks up again, Quentin is staring at him, eyes wide, all the movement stopped short.  
  
He bites his lip, then steps toward them both.  “Quentin?” he asks, nervous, because Quentin saw, Quentin was _there_  when the inversion happened…  
  
“Evan!”  Quentin moves fast, dragging Idie with them.  They stop maybe a step away from him, certainly within arms reach.  He’s gotten taller since they saw each other last, and it’s weird having to look down at them.  “I didn’t see you there.”  
  
Evan shrugs, trying not to seem too desperately pleased to see them.  “I’ve learned how to be inconspicuous,” he says, half-joking.  
  
“Which is, um, pretty impressive, considering.”  They look him up and down.  “Helluva growth spurt.”   
  
“Definitely,” Idie agrees, giving Evan a secret sort-of smile.  She’s relieved to see him, and he’s grateful for that.  
  
He’s six foot three now, and probably still growing, but he’s starting not to mind.  
  
“So, um, what are you two doing here?” he asks.  
  
“Well, I was thinking I would take Idie out for Valentine’s Day,” Quentin says, squeezing her hand.  “We haven’t really done anything special like that in a while, and so here we are.”  
  
Idie nods.  “It’s good to see you, though,” she says, her smile widening a little.  
  
Quentin seems to agree, because they close the gap and hug him tightly around the middle with one arm.  It’s a sharp, sudden movement, and Evan doesn’t have time to hug them back before they’re pulling away again.  
  
“Idie?” Quentin asks.  “Um.  I know this was supposed to be date type thing and all, but…”  
  
She laughs a little, a wild sound that seems to surprise even her.  “Yes.  Evan, do you want to eat with us?”  
  
Evan nods, and smiles wide for the first time in months.


End file.
